2012-03-21

Characteristics of Heavily Edited Objects in OpenStreetMap

As Editor of Future Internet (ISSN 1999-5903), an open access journal on Internet technologies and the information society, published by MDPI online we are pleased to announce the publication of the latest paper:

Characteristics of Heavily Edited Objects in OpenStreetMap

1 Department of Computer Science, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland2 School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Abstract

This paper describes the results of an analysis of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) database for the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland (correct to April 2011). 15; 640 OSM ways (polygons and polylines), resulting in 316; 949 unique versions of these objects, were extracted and analysed from the OSM database for the UK and Ireland.

In our analysis we only considered “heavily edited” objects in OSM: objects which have been edited 15 or more times. Our results show that there is no strong relationship between increasing numbers of contributors to a given object and the number of tags (metadata) assigned to it. 87% of contributions/edits to these objects are performed by 11% of the total 4128 contributors.

In 79% of edits additional spatial data (nodes) are added to objects. The results in this paper do not attempt to evaluate the OSM data as good/poor quality but rather informs potential consumers of OSM data that the data itself is changing over time. In developing a better understanding of the characteristics of “heavily edited” objects there may be opportunities to use historical analysis in working towards quality indicators for OSM in the future.